Necropolitical Ecogovernmentality: Marginalized Communities and Structural Disposability in India’s Environmental Governance

ABSTRACT India’s environmental governance in the post-independence era has been largely performative. Driven by development rhetoric, India’s ecological polices distribute precarity among the marginalized communities. I argue that ecogovernmentality, i.e. governing people through the management of the environment, is shaped by necropolitics. I demonstrate how death, displacement, migration, and forms of slow poison emerge as the central mechanisms of ecogovernmentality. I refer to this as necropolitical ecogovernmentality, which operates through the legitimization of structural violence and systematic un-witnessing. By examining Sanjay Barnela’s eco-documentary, Hunting Down Water (2003) as a visual case study, I demonstrate how necropolitical governmentality functions in India.